The deregulation of long distance telephone service has led to increased competition among service providers. In order for this competition to have value to the consumer, the consumer must be able to easily use different services. For this reason, local telephone companies are required to provide access to any long distance provider by means of an access prefix dialed before the long distance number. However, remembering the prefix and dialing the extra digits are inconveniences to the telephone user, and these inconveniences tend to inhibit many people from trying new services. Thus, more people would take advantage of competitive long distance providers, and competition would be further stimulated, if a convenient means could be provided of dialing the access code whenever any user in a household or small office wanted to place a long distance telephone call.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,644,633 to Kaufeld, et al discloses an autodialer intended to automatically modify a dialed number that meets a preprogrammed criterion, such as 1+ten digits. The invention stores the dial string and, if it meets the criterion disconnects by means of relays the line to the central office (on hook), reconnects the line (off hook), and redials the number along with whatever modifications or prefixes have been previously programmed into the invention. The temporary disconnect signals the central office that the call was aborted, allowing the invention to redial with the modified number.
One disadvantage of this “store and forward” approach is that the autodialer must be connected between the central office and any telephone that is intended to use it. In a residence, for example, several telephone extensions commonly share one telephone line. If a “store and forward” autodialer is to be used with all such extensions, then the residence wiring must be physically disconnected from the wire to the telephone company, and the autodialer installed between the two sets of wiring. This is not a task that consumers will readily undertake.
Other disadvantages should be apparent. The complexity and power required by relays, for example, may make it impractical for such a device to be small and battery-powered with an acceptable battery life.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,859,896 to Howard B. Rosen discloses an autodialer that connects in parallel with the other telephone extensions in a residence, thus avoiding the installation problems of a “store and forward” autodialer. This invention, however, always dials the preprogrammed dialing prefix whenever a telephone extension goes off hook. The prefix might be a local area code or a long distance access code. If the user wishes to dial a number without the prefix such as a local number he must “flash” the telephone hook switch and then redial. The invention senses the “flash” and does not dial the prefix again. One disadvantage of this approach is that the “flash” must be timed by the user to be long enough so that the central office treats the automatically-dialed prefix as an aborted call, while not so long that the autodialer does so also. It will be readily apparent that this method is not well-suited for many consumers, and would probably cause great annoyance.
The present art provides no method for dialing long distance access codes that can be considered a distinct improvement over manual dialing. Therefore, there is a need in the art for an auto dialer that dials a desired long-distance access code without distracting the user who is dialing, and that connects to the user's telephone lines in parallel fashion so as to work with all telephone extensions.